Mundum in humeris ferens
by trufflemores
Summary: 3.23. Savitar tried to kill Barry. Given one more second, he hits his mark.


**Author's Notes:** "Bearing the world on [my/your/his/her] shoulders."

It's been a while since I've written anything. Be gentle. Enjoy.

* * *

It doesn't burn, it doesn't bleed: it is simply electric, unceasing pressure, like a sledgehammer driven through his chest.

Then a gun fires and the hand retreats abruptly. Duration doesn't matter: the damage is already done. Barry's suit tanks, recording a final ledger of his existence, his heartbeat-diving-oxygen-levels-falling-bones-cracking-in-place.

Barry can't breathe. He falls to all fours and gapes at the ground, strangling on a paralyzed inhale. The world beyond his immediate senses evaporates: sharp grass nestles knife-like against his knees; indiscriminate pain anesthetizes his torso; a sense of finality purples the very breath he cannot draw. He reaches upward toward the wound, feeling heat pooling in an unwanted internal pocket.

As his world tips towards the edge, a blast like a thunderbolt breaks across his back and he arches. The world crackles into chiaroscuric focus. Hyperventilating, he folds forward and clutches the earth underneath his fingertips. Before he can panic, a slower, heavier wave passes over him and the next breath comes almost easy, fortifying, resetting.

A scorched tundra of red pain simmers in his chest, a forest-fire receding under the fury of a flash-flood. Blinking deliriously at the ground, Barry lumbers with ursine intent to his feet. A pair of hands steady him – two pairs, maybe three; he doesn't know where he begins and they end, his entire body some amorphous thing in-between them – and he leans into someone's shoulder more heavily than they are prepared for. Two others – definitely three, then – step in to support him.

He asks in a voice that is barely his, "What happened?"

Before any of them can respond, he turns and sees an impression on the grass, a human-sized imprint without an occupant. He winces, reaching up with a shaking hand to hold his right shoulder. The pain, while pacified, is still strong, strong enough to knock-him-off-his-feet, and were it not for the supporting hands he could not stand. He endures. But only just.

Iris cups his face and he can almost feel the gun smoldering in her hand. A single shot. And Savitar fell. "Are you okay?" she asks, and she knows he isn't, and he knows he isn't, but he nods anyway.

Reaching up, he covers one of her hands with his. "I'm okay," he says. Wincing, he lets his hand drop to his side. "Jay?" he asks, and—

"Right here, slugger."

Barry's shoulders relax. Cisco pats his back once, fortifying. "You good?" he asks.

 _No_.

Barry nods. "I'm good." Wally lets him go first, stepping away from his right side. Cisco holds on a moment longer, waiting, before he steps back. Barry inhales, rolling his shoulders carefully, and shivers when he feels the steady trickle of blood under his skin.

"It's self-cauterizing."

He looks over. Killer Frost stands ten feet away with her arms crossed. Her hair is still white, but her eyes are hazel. _Caitlin_. "You won't bleed out."

Barry blinks, stepping away from Cisco. Only half the lights in his mental home are lit. "How do you know?"

She levels an unimpressed look at him. Then she softens it and says simply, "You'd be dead by now if it wasn't."

Jay puts a hand on his left shoulder and cautions, "Easy."

"I'm good," Barry parrots. "I'm good." He staggers away from Jay's grip and stands under his own power. Iris steps forward and he holds out his arms to let her into them. Suppressing a groan, he presses his closed mouth against her shoulder. "Iris?"

"I'm okay," she says, squeezing him gently, meaning it. "I'm right here."

He nuzzles her, just a little, enough to say, _I almost didn't get this again_. Inhaling deeply, he lets her warmth infuse him for a long moment.

Without lifting his head, he repeats quietly, "What happened?"

"Two-Face Reversed you, so Iris shot him," Cisco explains, shrugging like it doesn't matter, and Barry nods like it doesn't matter, because it's okay now. He's okay.

"I blasted you to counteract it," Cindy pipes in. Barry lifts his head, blinking at her. "Stopped you cold, then revived you. Same thing happened to A." Her eyes are unreadable; there's a qualifier she isn't saying. Out loud, all she says is, "He lived. You'll be fine."

Barry rests his chin on Iris' shoulder for a long moment. Her arms frame his back in a warm, perfect cage. If he believed she could hold him forever, he wouldn't move. But already, he senses an anxious expectation: he needs to reclaim his place. _The team needs you_. With invisible reluctance, he leans back, straightens, and lets her go.

"Wally?" he checks in. Wally grins, holding out a hand, and it hurts to clasp it but Barry does. "You good?"

"Yeah, man." Squeezing his wrist, Wally lets his hand go. "We did it."

"We did it." Barry exhales. It still hurts. "No one else—?"

Jay affirms, "No one else."

Everyone relaxes.

Even Killer Frost.

"So." Barry looks right at Caitlin, knowing his eyes are glowing golden. "Where do you stand?"

Cisco leans back towards him; Cindy lifts her hands in silent preparation for a retaliatory strike, should-it-be-needed; even Wally and Jay stand on-guard.

Killer Frost – Caitlin – shrugs. "I don't know," she admits. "For now? Alone."

Cisco flinches; Barry puts a silent hand on his shoulder. He nods once because he cannot speak.

Without another word, Caitlin walks and no one tries to stop her. Cindy's hands lower once she is out of sight. Jay and Wally turn towards him, completing the semi-circle, Barry-at-the-center. He says slowly, "We won."

They watch him, expectant, still reeling a little.

He repeats it as firmly as he can: "We won."

. o .

Joe wants to know what happened, but there's no way to describe the catastrophic pain or the splitting, subconscious agony of knowing it was _over_ , no-chance-of-survival, until it wasn't, and a different catastrophe remade him, giveth-and-taketh-away, a fatal shot and a reviving bolt from the blue struck in nearly the same instant.

Thirty-six-hours-sleepless, Barry omits his brush with death entirely from the retelling. Hugging Joe at STAR Labs, he says simply, "Iris saved my life."

Joe squeezes him gently, like he knows how breakable Barry is, and the pressure weighing catastrophically against his chest and shoulders and soul _eases_.

. o .

Holding Iris in his arms that night, he knows how much he can lose, more than a heartbeat, more than a single breath, more than ten thousand of each, his _entire world_. A world that both depends on him, and needs him, a world that encompasses and exceeds him, a world that prevails without and ends with him.

Being there for it is the most sacred burden he has ever carried.

He wouldn't trade it for anything.


End file.
